Want to take a break from election talk...

But I can't really think of much else to say. Like for many of us, it's been pretty heavily on my mind, and a central feature of conversations both virtual and in-person.

Other things, other things... I have a concert week coming up. We're singing Durufle's Requiem, which I sang in college and really, really loved, so I'm enjoying the opportunity to connect with it again. Work has been on the busy side, with a report coming due very soon and a few other projects ramping up. Meanwhile, I'm also thinking about getting back on the job market to see if I can find work that takes more direct action toward social justice. Working for a research organization accomplishes that goal somewhat, but in a much more nebulous way. I had the same impulse after the 2004 election, but I was looking for library jobs in parallel and found a librarian position first. Still, the thought has long remained in the back of my mind, and now may be the time to really start.

Arrival

I've been anticipating this movie since I randomly saw the first trailer as a YouTube ad a few months ago. An intelligent-looking science fiction movie about language, starring Amy Adams, based on a story by Ted Chiang? Sign me up. So we went to see it today, and I was more than satisfied. Amy Adams was phenomenal, the story was smart and thoughtful, the visuals were effective, the music set the mood perfectly. It's a meditation on memory, and the blessing and cure of foreknowledge. If you're interested in a sci-fi movie that's heavier on the thinking and lighter on the explosions, I definitely recommend it.

I hadn't read the short story, "Story of Your Life", so I decided to read it this evening. It was quite different, and less to my taste than the movie -- the story went into much greater detail on the linguistic details of language structure and language learning, and it also spent quite a bit of time on physics, which the movie barely touched on. I feel like that level of detail would have bogged down the movie, which moved as a fairly slow pace as it was. Not too slow -- it actually felt just about the right length -- but any slower and it probably wouldn't have worked. As it was, I think Arrival does a good job of taking the main ideas of the text and transforming them to film.

( Spoilers, for the story and the movie. )

Good movie. Go see it. Strong contender for best SF/F film of 2016, for sure -- you can bet that this will be on my Hugo ballot.